track: floodsub

[daviddias]

I've created this issue to track the development of the floodsub API inside the JS libraries, getting the people interested to rail in quickly and also to give a venue to sync for the ones working on the endeavour.

Important links

• API discussion - FloodSub API discussion #530
• js-ipfs floodsub PR - https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/pull/531/files
• js-ipfs-api floodsub PR - floodsub api ipfs-inactive/js-ipfs-http-client#377
• floodsub design notes - https://github.com/libp2p/pubsub-notes
• pubsub research group - https://github.com/libp2p/pubsub
• floodsub JS implementation - https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p-floodsub
• floodsub testnet - https://github.com/gavinmcdermott/js-libp2p-pstn

Milestones

• Design and agree on a FloodSub Interface
• Get first implementation in
• Apply pubsub testnet to get real data from the implementation.

[daviddias]

Lead

@gavinmcdermott is leading the charge of getting js-libp2p-floodsub integrated into js-ipfs and with that come up with an API that works for a scenario where floodsub is 'in process'(js-ipfs) or 'remote' (js-ipfs-api/through http).

[daviddias]

Testing floodsub interop

Currently, we have interop between go and js. One way to level that up is to grab the floodsub-testnet work and attach it to js-ipfs nodes instead, since js-ipfs and js-ipfs-api share the same API, we can make the testnet code spawn both types of nodes and see how the network behaves :)

[daviddias]

API design considerations

• API should enable the user cancel a subscription (a not only by killing the process or closing the tab as it happens if js-ipfs-api is used right now)
• floodsub API should enable the developers to not be target of spam attacks - support for TopicDescriptios - https://github.com/libp2p/pubsub-notes/blob/master/flooding/flooding.proto#L22-L49

[haadcode]

@diasdavid can we keep the API discussion in the original issue so that we don't have a gazillion places to look for?

The original discussion is here: #530.

API should enable the user cancel a subscription

This was added to the spec today, ipfs.pubsub.unsubscribe("topic")

floodsub API should enable the developers to not be target of spam attacks - support for TopicDescriptios

There's comments regarding this in the issue above. Let's continue there.

[haadcode]

To make sure information gets passed around: I'm working on refactoring the current js-ipfs-api PR and that work is here: https://github.com/haadcode/js-ipfs-api/blob/fix/pubsub/src/api/pubsub.js and tests are here https://github.com/haadcode/js-ipfs-api/blob/fix/pubsub/test/ipfs-api/pubsub.spec.js.

[haadcode]

There's also work that needs to happen on go-ipfs side in order to land js-ipfs-api, mainly this: ipfs/kubo#3304 (API call to pubsub/sub does not return HTTP header until first message arrives)

[haadcode]

There's a new PR for js-ipfs from @gavinmcdermott here #610 (posting here to keep track of all the work that's happening)